Digg is a great experiment in the power of Democracy and self-policing over bureaucratic editorial influence. For those who have spent the last year or so in a subterranean underworld filled with Morlocks with a notable lack of broadband access, Digg is a social news site. Users vote (digg) stories and the stories with the greatest number of votes at a given moment make it to the front page. Thus far, it has been an amazing filter, providing pretty solid news and comments with a very low barrier to entry.

Now for a bit of fear-mongering.

The way this system can and will fail is if enough people believe that the allure of being a top digger is somehow more important than honestly digging sites for their merit. It seems that more and more pressure is on members of social networking sites to produce volume, possibly to help them get picked up by the Jason Calacanis’ of the world. Whether this is just a hiccup or a trend, one can only wonder. What I do know is that the best way to sour a Democracy is to get enough people together to rig the vote…

For more detailed analysis, read the comments on digg to the latest attempt to game the system.

[Image from the diggnation podcast with Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht]

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